


Cross your heart and hope to live

by orphan_account



Category: Fairytales for Wilde Girls, Supernatural
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternative Lifestyles, Artist Dean Winchester, Awesome Balthazar, Bad Parenting, Big Brother Balthazar, Castiel and Dean Winchester are Cute, Castiel in Dresses, Castiel-centric, Child Neglect, Crossdressing Castiel, Dark, Demiboy Castiel, Fairies, Good Friend Charlie, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Magic, Mentions of Suicide, Minor Character Death, Multi, Nerd Dean, Rating May Change, Tattoo Artist Dean, Weird Castiel, Writing in a different style..., because dean and cas are cute, but also very fluffy at the same time, but never about a main character, cas is having some issues, dark themes, dean wants to understand, depressed character, fairytales - Freeform, occasional description of suicide
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-15
Updated: 2016-06-21
Packaged: 2018-05-14 04:03:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 10
Words: 15,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5728861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Gonna tell me your real name this time, bright eyes?" Dean called.</p><p>Castiel laughed and called back, leaning forward onto the tips of his toes. "Castiel Angelo Wilde!"</p><p>Dean raised an eyebrow, clearly not believing him. "Guess I'll just call you number thirty-six, then."</p><p>"And you must be the new number thirty-seven."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Parties and Ferris Wheels

**Author's Note:**

> Hey! So, this is going to be a long piece of work (provided I can keep up motivation), based off a wonderful book called Fairytales for Wilde Girls. I highly recommend it as a feminist piece of literature with an interesting perspective on mental illnesses. I love the book, but it does have quite a few trigger warnings due to the subject matter. This work will also have possible triggers, including this first scene where a live suicide is broadcast on the TV, while Castiel watches. If it's not your cup of tea, skip down to the first break (What Dean Winchester saw in a vision, as he first looked at Castiel Wilde) and I'll summarize it at the end. My work will probably be a great deal lighter than the original book, and a lot more shippier. I hope you enjoy!

Once upon a time, Castiel Wilde was watching late-night television with his eldest brother, Balthazar, and the news company decided to broadcast a live suicide.

The girl had soft, light hair, and smooth skin, She looked like the sort of person you'd see at an animal shelter, or perhaps a church bake sale. Her eyes flickered towards the camera, and Castiel's own eyes widened in response.

He knew this girl.  
She knew him.  
Even if they'd never met.

The girl stood on top of a Ferris wheel, a travelling fair stopping off in the town of Avalon. Her hair billowed in the wind as she stood, a martyr without a cause. People gathered around and pulled out their phones, but no one did anything to help. The girl ignored them, staring straight through the television to meet Castiel's anxious gaze.  
They looked at each other for a long time, suspended between space and time and destinies.

The slightest step forward and she was falling, eyes closed and body spread out like somebody about to take flight.  
Balthazar seemed to snap out of whatever trance he was in, and lunged forward to shut off the television, a low 'click' interrupting the 'thud'. A black screen covering up the crumpled form of the girl. Balthazar was apologizing, trying to distract him, and Castiel was still staring unblinkingly at the screen, as if the girl's ghost might call him into it poltergeist-style.

Castiel was watching late-night television with his eldest brother Balthazar.

He was an only child.

 

 

**What Dean Winchester saw in a vision, as he first looked at Castiel Wilde:**

Blue eyes, blue hair, blue lips, ice creeping up the boy's arms as he laughed and held them out, a cold embrace like a kiss from the Snow Queen.

Dean blinked a little, trying to get rid of the fog the alcohol had poured over his brain. The party music was thrumming through his bones, and he sat up slowly.  
The guy had a great messy mass of hair so dark it was more an absence of light than an actual body part. It tumbled forward into the boy's eyes as he leaned over a book in his lap. He had shimmery white lipstick on which only added to his ghostly appearance, legs crossed under the book and under his sea-blue skirt. Dean blinked. There was a guy and he was wearing a skirt. He hadn't known he liked that.

And then the blue eyes looked up and straight at Dean, his gaze impermeable, a hangman's noose stretching between them.

"Uh, hey," Dean said, giving a dorky little wave he immediately cringed at.

"I don't sleep around," the guy replied, firmly.

Well. "I- that's cool, I guess." Dean smiled awkwardly.

The boy straightened up in his chair and gave a small smile. "I can't, actually. My older brother would kill me."

"Protective?" Dean chuckled, empathizing with the mysterious older brother.

"Think bodyguard meet bull terrier."

They looked at each other a moment more before glancing away, cheeks flushed between the alcohol and the embarrassment.

"I'm Dean."

"Ah, I thought you looked familiar." The boy smiled at Dean, taking a sip of something that looked like milk. Who the hell drank milk at a party?

"I'm sorry?" Dean frowned. "Do I know you?"

"No, but I've read your obituary. Twenty-seven, right?" The strange guy smiled again. "Remind me never to take candy from you."

Dean stared at him for a while before it finally clicked. "Are you- Wait, are you talking about Dean fucking Corll? The serial killer?"

"Sure. You were also a torturer, though."

Dean burst out laughing, taking a while to come back to his senses. "I'm Dean Winchester," he said. "No torturing here."

The boy extended a hand to Dean, fingernails glittering in the party lights.

"I'm Elmer Henley."

It wasn't until much later that Dean realized, when he'd stumbled out of bed with his head singing heavy metal. He fumbled with his phone and googled the boy's name, swearing to himself as he looked at the search results, a slow smile stretching over his face. Dean grinned and ran a hand through his hair.

_"While in police custody, Elmer Henley confessed to luring young boys to Dean Corll's house, saying the killer had paid him $200 for each head."_

"The fucker," he laughed as he flopped back onto his bed, still severely hung over.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Castiel's watching television late at night with his eldest brother, Balthazar, who reacts negatively to it. Castiel knows the girl on the television despite never seeing her before, and despite watching television with his eldest brother, is an only child.


	2. Eggs and magic mirrors.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Castiel’s eyes flickered up to meet hers, and Mother Wilde slowly pulled her hands out of his hair. They stared at each other for a tense moment, before Mother sighed.
> 
> “Just don’t tell him,” she said, smiling again and wiping a smeared bit of eyeliner from his cheek. “You know how he doesn’t… like thinking about stuff like that.”

**Dramatis Personae:**

_Castiel Wilde:_ Sixteen. Confused about the gender binary. Avalon’s resident crossdressing/crazy/cruel misfit.

 _Mother Wilde:_ Birth name: Beck Rosen. Middle aged and still sunshiny, although her excitable nature has dimmed somewhat since the Diagnosis.

 _Father Wilde:_ Chuck. Struggling author. Lives from pay check-to-liquor store. Occasionally steals pills from his wife to see if they make things brighter. Found the results disappointing.

 

The bathroom was misted over like some steamy dragon’s den, water-smoke billowing out of the bath.  
A person in pieces: small wrists and fingers, bruises scattered over his ankles, hipbones made of marble, and hands coated in something that looked like honey.

Castiel Wilde shook his unruly hair out of his face and smoothed the not-honey over his legs, before leaning up to breathe sticky fog over the mirror. The glass blurred even more, muddling his portrait.

“Mirror, mirror, on the wall,” he hummed, brushing a wet strand of hair from his eyes. “Who’s the cleverest of them all?”

Some invisible finger drew lines into the fogged up glass, a wet picture slowly forming. Two arms, two legs, one eye and a mouth. Castiel appreciated the image for a moment before smiling and scrubbing it out. He grabbed a towel and draped it over the wiry hipbones, humming some pop song he might’ve heard at the party.

“I hope you’re dressed, because I’m coming in.”

Castiel turned from the mirror as Mother Wilde slid over the slippery floor and into the room. Mother Wilde had soft blonde hair that fell around her shoulders, a face that couldn’t be classified any way other than ‘cute’. Even with the sickness, Becky looked both young and sweet, a sort of friendliness to her appearance that Castiel had never been able to master.  
Even so, all his favourite photos of her were from before it all went wrong, a mouthful of glittering silver braces, blurry photos at the swimming pool, chubby and nerdy and smiling brighter than Cas had seen in a long time.

“Ah, clothed,” she smiled, kissing the top of his head and starting to comb her fingers through his hair. “Your eyes are dark, how tired are you?” She frowned, mother hen instincts activated.

“Not at all,” Cas replied, wiping at his eyes with his arm and smearing black over the skin. “I just forgot to take off my make up.”

“You were out that late?”

Castiel winced at a particularly hard tug on one of his tangles. “I left early, went to spend time in the woods.” He’d fallen asleep there, in the safe place he’d grown up and learned to walk, cushioned by moss with a small smile on his face. He’d felt safe, until he started dreaming of carousels and Ferris wheels, and the girls at the church with their warm eyes and soft hair, and the way she had looked when she peered through the television.

“Don’t tell your father, you know he’d prefer you were indoors,” Mother smiled, teasingly curling a strand of his hair around her finger. “He still wishes he could lock you up where it’s safe. You know there’s no way he’d even let you out of his side if he knew you’d seen that horrible thing on the news.”

Castiel’s eyes flickered up to meet hers, and Mother Wilde slowly pulled her hands out of his hair. They stared at each other for a tense moment, before Mother sighed.

“Just don’t tell him,” she said, smiling again and wiping a smeared bit of eyeliner from his cheek. “You know how he doesn’t… like thinking about stuff like that.”

 

**Breakfast**

Mother was downstairs before Castiel was, wrapped up in a polar bear dressing gown and watching the oven as it baked something. “Afternoon,” she laughed teasingly, and Cas rolled his eyes and smiled.

“Hello,” he said, pulling a chair out at the table and sitting down, cupping his face in his hands and letting his elbows rest on it.

Father Wilde glanced up at him and grunted before hiding behind his newspaper again. “Eat some breakfast.”

“Eggs?” Mother offered.

Castiel shrugged and tilted his head to the side. “No, thank you.”

Father lifted his head and frowned, setting the paper down so he could stare a little more accusingly. “Anything happen last night?”

“Nothing noticeable,” said Castiel, sparing himself a moment to think of Mr Dean Corll/Winchester.

“He wants to hear if you met any boys,” Mother said excitedly, moving to kiss his head again. “Any special ones that you really liked. So he can go stand outside their house and glare.”

Castiel smiled, leaning over the table. “Papa, didn’t you meet Mother at a party? You know, in your teenage years? Around my age?”

Father Wilde made a scoffing sound but didn’t otherwise reply. Mother’s smile slid down her face and she quickly turned and started paying attention to the eggs again.

Castiel scowled across the table, trying to glare a message into his father’s brain: _Acknowledge her. Say something._

“School’s back tomorrow,” Father said eventually. “You’ll need to start fixing your sleep schedule.” He grabbed the mug of coffee and took a swig. Castiel wondered for a moment if there was alcohol mixed in it. Father stood up, taking his half-eaten bowl of cereal, and Castiel’s brow furrowed.

“It’s Sunday. Take a break from work, everyone else does,” he said bitterly.

“Gotta work on my novel.”

Castiel sighed and pushed his face into his hands. School hadn’t started yet but Father was already locking himself up in his study, ignoring Mother and inserting himself into his fantasy worlds. Now that Cas would be back at school, Father didn’t want to be trapped in with Mother, not without his child there to shield him from her hope.

Mother shuffled the pan as if she was going to flip the eggs. No one said anything.

Castiel glanced over at the newspaper and noticed the picture of the Ferris wheel, the twinkling lights, the crumpled, wingless form of the girl who couldn’t fly…

The family cat, Ruby, wove between his legs and coaxed Castiel out of his thoughts. He stood up and lifted the cat from under the table, kissing her whiskers and carrying her to the laundry, where she was fed. By the time he was back in the kitchen, Mother had gone and the unattended eggs were starting to blacken.

“Eggs,” Castiel muttered, and Father jumped from where he was scraping the cereal out.

“Idiot,” he scowled, flicking bits of burnt egg into the bin.

Castiel shook his head and left the room. He hated the way Father spoke about her. She was up today, out of bed and trying to be happy. She was trying to get him to speak to her, to make them a happy family again.

Unlike someone Castiel could mention.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No Dean this time, but I promise there will be some destiel in the next chapter. Thank you for reading and leaving kudos!


	3. Boys and Plum trees

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean Corll was moving things from the old car into the house. Box upon box of trinkets and possessions, secrets, mementos. He turned back to grab another armful from the back seat and looked up suddenly, like Castiel’s gaze had become a shout. He looked straight through the tinsel and the tree and right at Castiel.  
> He didn’t notice Balthazar, but nobody ever did.

_Curtain Up- A Setting_

**Avalon:** A small village somewhere hidden in America, at the foot of a hill, covered in woods and wildlife. Where trends come to die.

 **Vivien’s wood:** A thick brush of trees, decidedly haunted according to the superstitious, and decidedly weird to the sceptical. A small, dirty path around the woodland is the only access, unless you wanted to dive headfirst into the hour-long walk through the prickly, rambling woods.

 **Aurora Court:** The tiny, tiny street situated in the dense woodland. If Avalon is in the middle of nowhere, Aurora Court is in the middle of nowhere in the middle of nowhere. There are only four houses on the street, one of which is occupied by our hero and his family.

 **Number thirty-six:** Castiel’s residence, his birthplace and the home of the Wildes. Two stories tall, crooked, and with an unattended but thriving garden. On the second story was Castiel’s room, candles resting by the open window and the door only ever locked at night.

 **The three other houses:** One occupied by an old, bitter hermit, mad ever since the death of his wife. He occasionally shouted bible verses against sodomy and witchcraft when Castiel walked past.  
The other two houses were fairly simple, one with a sign saying “To rent,” the other with a sticker saying “Sold”.

 

 

Castiel’s apricot tree was dying.

It had been dying for about six years now, but this time it was serious about it. It had been slowly decaying from the inside out, shrivelled up and weakening as the summers passed. Occasionally it would decide to bloom again and burst into fruit, but the apricots were more green than orange and more stone than fruit.

It was the last day of freedom for Castiel, and the afternoon seemed to drag on but speed by. He leaned against the tree, settling down, and watched as the bees buzzed through the wilderness of his garden. He folded his legs into some prayer-like pretzel, remembering Mother’s brief yoga phase. It had been the fad for a while, the fix-everything, cure-it-all. Castiel had always been more flexible than her, anyway, and she gave it up after a while, falling from the mania into a slump.

“It’s going to die, isn’t it?”

Castiel blinked one eye open, cat-like, and smiled softly up at the form of his eldest brother. “I think so,” he said. “This might’ve been the last summer.”

Balthazar nodded, slowly moving to sit down next to Castiel. He groaned as he sat down in the dirt and made a show of brushing down his fancy clothing. Cas rolled his eyes fondly. “It’s sick as anything,” Balthazar said musingly, glancing up at the tree offering them little shade. He opened his mouth and spoke a little cautiously. “When my mother was sick, she always used to sit up and get me to fix her hair. She always said that she needed to look good in case any rich gentlemen came by to visit.” He winked, and Castiel gave him a smile.

Balthazar didn’t like to talk much about his old family, the times before the Wildes. Cas knew a bit about the events, but not much about the details.

“And when my sisters were sick,” Balthazar continued, “she kept waking them so she could curl their hair.”

“That sounds cruel.”

“They _hated_ it,” Balthazar chuckled, shaking his head. “But looking good always made Mama feel better, I think. Hell, it would probably make me feel better if I didn’t already look so beautiful.”

Castiel scoffed and uncrossed his legs, standing up and brushing down his shorts. “If you think it helped…”

“What helped? _Petit frère_?”

He was already halfway to the door, answering Balthazar’s question when he returned with a box of Christmas trinkets, a star on top for the tree.

The two of them strung broken lights around the dying tree, hanging baubles from the branches and tinsel through the leaves.

“An angel for the top?” Balthazar teased, waving a winged figurine in the air.

“No, it’s cruel,” Castiel replied, taking the figure and putting it back in the box. “Poor thing, having a tree pressed up its rump.”

“Sounds fun,” Balthazar commented. Cas sighed and silently wondered why he had to deal with this, before he was broken out of his thoughts by a buzzing sound. “One of your bees?” Balthazar asked.

Castiel shook his head and pulled out his phone. “Charlie.”

 _You missed a great party last night,_ Charlie whined.

 _I’m sure. what happened after I left?_ Castiel replied, smiling down at his phone.

_Ash started a mosh pit and puked everywhere. You should’ve seen it. Also I kinda broke my arm?_

_How in the name of god did you break your arm?_ Asked Castiel, typing furiously.

_You know Jo Harvelle, right? Well, yeah, her. I was trying to be cool and funny and I was re-enacting a scene from Buffy._

_Please continue._

_Well, I tripped backwards and fell down the stairs and landed on my arm. But it’s okay, because she thought it was funny._

_I’m glad it was worth it, then._

_Completely worth it!_

Balthazar peered over Castiel’s shoulder in his nosy way. “You left early again?” he asked. “Cassie, how are you going to make friends if you keep leaving parties early?”

“I didn’t want to go in the first place,” Castiel sighed. “I shouldn’t have.”

“Why the fuck not?”

“Because!” Castiel waved a hand towards the house and sighed. “Dad got upset and Mom worked herself up, and they’ve locked themselves away.”

“So? You’re still a fucking virgin, who cares what they think?” Balthazar asked, and Castiel glared.

“What does my sex life- or lack thereof- have to do with anything? It’s not important.”

“How else will the suitors know you’re available?”

Castiel laughed and shook his head, hanging up another bauble to distract himself. “Ha, ha. That’s the entire reason Dad’s supposedly in a mood. Suitors. Because there are so many people just _dying_ to date me.”

Balthazar grinned, poking Castiel’s nose. “Fathers get sour when it comes to dating. He has to let go of your hand to let another take it in marriage.”

“Marriage?” scoffed Castiel, pushing his hand away. “The only reason I went was because people would talk if I didn’t.”

In his experience, people talked the most about emptiness, the spaces where people weren’t. In the town of Avalon, the gossip focused on who wasn’t dating who, who missed out on the party.

“I didn’t even stay long,” Cas sighed. “I went back out to the woods. Bobby said the herd had a new foal, you know.”

“Did you find it?”

Cas shook his head and picked up a few more ornaments. “No, it was just… empty. Weirdly empty. Like every animal had just taken flight-“

He broke off as the roar of a car drowned out the background sounds, and the two brothers rushed to peer between the branches. From around the corner that lead to town, a moving van puffed its way up the street, letting out exhaust-pipe fumes and scaring away the birds. It was followed quickly by another two cars, one large and boring, the other sleek and old.

“New neighbours,” Balthazar commented, watching interestedly as two uniformed men started to carry the furniture into the driveway.

Castiel shrugged and held out his hand. “Pass me the tinsel- the blue tinsel, Balth.” He continued to decorate the tree, covering up its worst patches and ornamenting its better ones. He tried not to stare too much, knowing that he had a bad habit of looking at people too intently. Eventually the curiosity got too much and he chanced a look, and when he finally did push aside the branches to stare across the street, this is what he saw.

A boy with green eyes and a hungover gaze.  
A boy he’d only seen through the blue mist of fog machines.

Dean Corll was moving things from the old car into the house. Box upon box of trinkets and possessions, secrets, mementos. He turned back to grab another armful from the back seat and looked up suddenly, like Castiel’s gaze had become a shout. He looked straight through the tinsel and the tree and right at Castiel.

He didn’t notice Balthazar, but nobody ever did.

The boy wriggled his fingers in a small wave, arms clutching onto a large box marked ‘NIGHTMARES’ in messy handwriting. He walked to the end of his driveway and grinned across the road, and Castiel did the same.

 

**A Picture of Castiel Wilde as Viewed by a Sober Dean Winchester:**

Dean recognized him immediately. The drunkenness and the strobe lights could only hide so much. The snow queen’s alter ego was a boy with:

  * Scruffy hair, like he hadn’t quite figured out how to use a comb.
  * Dark eyebrows, filled in with a pencil that looked almost blue-black, far too dark for the boys messy brown hair.
  * Chapped lips visible even from across the road. The guy needed some chapstick. Or, y’know, Dean could just kiss him. That might help.
  * Blue striped socks with lace around the tops, muddy as anything.
  * Pale yellow shorts and an oversized cashmere sweater.



And he was alone, looking completely happy with his own company.

 

**Dean Corll- An Appraisal:**

Castiel Wilde knew that appearances told you very little about a person, unless you were trying to guess from their clothing what period they’d died in. However, he managed to notice several things about Dean Corll’s appearance that he hadn’t been able to the night before.

He was tall. Maybe around six foot, stocky rather than gangly, a slight pudge around his stomach that Castiel couldn’t help but find endearing.  
He had strong arms, muscles fairly defined in the afternoon light.  
His entire body was covered in freckles. Like hickies from the sun, love bites comprised of heat and stained skin.  
Spiked up hair- but almost unintentionally, looking cool but also unaware of it, the coolest, untouchable sort of cool.  
Big, black glasses framing his face- maybe less cool and more nerdy, but still somehow ridiculously attractive.  
Worn out jeans, dirty and frayed.

“Gonna tell me your real name this time, bright eyes?” Dean called.

Castiel laughed and called back, leaning forward onto the tips of his toes. “Castiel Angelo Wilde!”

Dean raised an eyebrow, clearly not believing him. “Guess I’ll just call you number thirty-six, then.”

“And you must be the new number thirty-seven.”

Dean Corll/Number thirty-seven bowed in response. An old stereo tumbled out of the NIGHTMARES box and he quickly picked it up.

“Dean!” A middle-aged woman stepped out of the house with a visible baby bump and a slight curve in her back. “Come help, Jo’s getting into the silverware again and you know how trigger-happy she is with knives!”

Dean waved at Castiel again, the box slipping out of his arms dangerously. “See you round, Elmer Henley,” he said, face lit up with a smirk that definitely did not make Castiel’s heart skip a beat.

Castiel waved back before walking back over to his tree, joining Balthazar again as Dean walked indoors.

“You told him your real name,” Balthazar said.

He was rearranging the tinsel restlessly, hiding his face from Castiel’s view. Cas knew what his expression would’ve been if he turned around, anyway. He could feel it in the air around them, fierce jealousy mixed with love and a sprinkling of protectiveness. Balthazar didn’t just want to protect Cas from suicides and dying plum trees and parties, but also from boys, from heartbreak.

Balthazar had been Castiel’s brother since he was four years old. His favourite brother, the first of six.


	4. Ghosts and Big Brothers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As he walked to school on Monday, head still filled with Dean’s uncomfortable shrugs and bright grins, Castiel stumbled across a dead child.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is more of a filler chapter, so it's quite short... I'll post another one later today, most likely.

Castiel was named after an angel, and a poet.

This caused him great grievances sometimes, with the oddness of his first name and the blatant homosexuality of his last one.

Oscar Wilde had been gay, clever, and remarkable. A playwright, a novelist, a poet. He was rather openly gay in the conservative Victorian society, and died for it. He wrote stories with scandalous undertones, covered up with humour.  
Becky Wilde loved Oscar. According to her, if the man weren’t a flamboyantly gay dead man, she would have married him as soon as she could. Castiel often privately thought that his mother just liked men who were never going to love her back as passionately.

Oscar Wilde had a younger sister, too. Isola, she was called. She died at the tender point of nine, stolen by bad health care and a world that wouldn’t have cared for her. Castiel thought a lot about the little Isola. He wondered what she’d have been like if she lived a little longer. An artist, a comedian, writing dark stories with the same scandalous undertones. The sort of girl who’d get caught kissing another one and would have to bribe her way out of it.

Castiel Wilde didn’t die at nine. On his tenth birthday, sitting down on the lawn with chubby little cheeks and residual baby fat on his legs, Mother tugged him aside. She pulled him into the shade of the then-healthy plum tree and brushed her hands through his hair. Whispering to him that he must live twice as hard for Isola’s sake.

Nine year old Isola Wilde lay dead in a coffin, skin pale.

Ten year old Castiel was tan, plump, and happy.

Sixteen year old Castiel was pale, skinny, and unreadable. He wore too much make-up by anyone’s standards. Skinny enough to be some terrible mockery of a cheerleader, no curves to his body other than the spread of his hips. He lived in Doc Martens and occasionally bought back fashions nobody had really ever liked. His middle name was Angelo, which only added to the religious iconography. He was only just sixteen, and had a secret universe.

His parents had abandoned their efforts to play along with his fancies, but it was still real, more real to him than the people surrounding him.

Castiel Wilde was frozen. His feet eternally cold, his fingertips leaving mist over window panes. He knew how he was made to be an ice boy, his first life.

A sculptor had found a block of ice, taken it and chopped into it until it took the form of his lover- the boy he’d wanted to marry, if times had been different. He cut and hacked and shaped the ice until it was beautiful, until there was the love of his youth smiling at him from the centre of his workshop. The boy that he might’ve run away with if the sickness hadn’t come to the land, freezing him over and chilling him from the inside out.  
When he finished, he moved the Ice Prince into his cottage. It was the dead of winter, and the sculptor couldn’t bear to light his torches and fires and heat himself. He couldn’t bring himself to see his love melt away again, tears sliding down his icy cheeks.  
When the winter ended, the town found the sculptor dead, taken by the cold just as his boy had been so many years ago. Castiel the Ice Prince was smiling bright as anything in the frozen hut. The town thought it was a shame to hide his perfectly-carved form away, and took him out to the village. They put him on a podium in the town square, and in no summer did he melt, frozen forever.

But that was just a fairytale.

 

**What Castiel saw when he glanced across the street in the morning:**

Dean Corll pushing two younger teenagers towards a car, groaning irritatedly and rushing back to the house before emerging again with three school bags.

Castiel smiled to himself, shifting his bag on his shoulders and leaning against the fence post. “Need any help, number thirty-seven?”

Dean’s head snapped up and his face immediately lit up in one of those wonderful grins. “And hello to you too, number thirty-six.”

“Dean!” whined the boy, tall like his brother, but looking like he hadn’t quite grown into his legs. His hair hung around his face, almost shoulder length. “I need to get to class!”

“Shut up, bitch, we’ve got ages,” Dean snapped back, before giving Cas an apologetic smile.

Castiel smiled back. “Siblings,” he quipped.

Dean groaned. “Considering you’re the baby of your family, you have no idea how annoying younger siblings are.” The blonde girl punched him in the stomach with enough strength to make Castiel wince. “Fuck, Jo!”

“Well, don’t allow me to keep you,” Cas smiled, lifting his bag a little higher.

Dean opened his mouth before shutting it again. He smiled and shrugged a little awkwardly, before waving. “Bye, Elmer Henley.”

“Goodbye, Dean Corll,” Castiel replied, smiling to himself and heading off to the woods, beginning his walk to school. He couldn’t help but smile a little wider when the long-haired boy hissed to his brother, “is that your _boyfriend_ , Dean? Is he your _boyfriend_?” Castiel bit his lip to prevent himself from smiling to obviously and quickly hurried into the woods.

 

**Birdcages**

As he walked to school on Monday, head still filled with Dean’s uncomfortable shrugs and bright grins, Castiel stumbled across a dead child.

It was a starved, empty body, hanging from a tree. Not by a rope, but shoved roughly into a large birdcage. He was cramped in it, one stripey-socked leg swinging down from the cage.

Before he had found the dead body, Castiel had been on a quest. An epic quest, searching out the unicorns. He had spread out from his normal trail, looking for any sign of them, a rainbow hair, the sound of hooves, a shimmer on the ground. Castiel _knew_ they were here, but they were dying out and determined to hide from him- to hide from _Castiel_ , the only person in all of Avalon who even knew about the unicorns!

But it was all forgotten when he stood under the cage and looked up at it, the leg swinging in the air. He couldn’t see the corpse’s face, only a tangle of messy dark hair, a grubby playsuit. He glanced over the silver buckles on the shoes, the rips in the long socks. He stepped a little closer, breath caught in his throat.

“If you hang around here any longer, you’re going to be late, darling.”

He’d been too distracted to notice Balthazar moving behind him, and he jumped slightly as his brother stepped forward.

“Run along, Cassie,” Balthazar said softly, looking up at the cage and biting his lip.

“I can’t leave them,” Castiel pleaded. “Let me get them down.”

Balthazar shook his head, reaching out to brush his thumb over Castiel’s cheek. “He’s beyond your help, _petit frère._ Get to school. I’ll stay with him, I have to see…”

Castiel knew better than to argue with his cleverest and most determined brother. He mumbled out a “goodbye,” before starting to make his way through the forest, glancing back at Balthazar, who was still staring up intently. He knew what Balthazar needed to know. Whether the child would be back to the woods. Whether it would decide to haunt. Sometimes it got muddly, blurred lines, grey areas. It was hard to tell what was corpse and what was ghost.

But ghosts didn’t frighten Castiel. They never had.

**Dramatis Personae:**

_Balthazar:_ The first prince, the eldest brother. A ghost of a young English gentleman.

 _Dead Body:_ Unknown. Believed male by Balthazar. Trapped in a cage and severely emaciated.


	5. Witches and Dead Boys

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ‘once I die, I want my eye to be plucked out and carried to my father, so he may see through it what happened.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings for child abuse, bad relationships with your mother, death, and eyeballs being removed. Also awkward situations with your crush's stupid dad.

Castiel had been four when he started noticing the ghosts- or maybe he’d seen them all his life, but four was as early as he could remember. Balthazar was the first he’d met, a charming, cocky gentleman from London in the days of King Charles. His mother was French, and he had her hair, light coloured and soft. He dressed finely as his father had done, laughing and drinking with the ribald King. And that was how he had died, age twenty-four in the embers of a party not quite ready to end- blood and alcohol and illegal substances mixing together. He lay propped against a banquet table, entire body giving up. Balthazar often joked that, at the very least, he had escaped the plague.

 

**School**

St Dominic’s College was run by nuns, the occasional preacher, and a few people with legitimate teaching degrees. Everyone there was old, except the students. It was always strange to be back at school after he’d left, the class bleak and dark and prison-like. Castiel briefly wondered why he hadn’t run away. The gates clanged shut behind him and Cas sighed, biting his lip and looking around his jail.

Charlie was off school with her broken arm, and Castiel sat with an empty chair next to him for the rest of his classes.

Raphael, the teacher who took science, sneered at him as always.

Hester and her little gang of rich girls talked about him through all the classes in stage-whispers.

Castiel’s day did not go very well.

It was when he was walking down the hall on his way to lunch that things looked a little less boring.

There was an inky darkness seeping out from one of the bathrooms. It was sticky and fluid and clung to the shoes of students who walked past. No one else noticed it, paying more attention to the flickering lights than the black substance oozing out of the bathroom. Castiel decided to follow it, making his way through the crowd into the empty bathroom, the lights blinking on and off more rapidly as he approached. A woman stood in the bathroom, looking away from him and at a wall of sinks. She had a huge, dark cloak that clung to her form, melting down her body to the ground like a liquid. When Castiel stepped forward, the dark ooze covering the ground immediately retreated, like something was sucking it into the cape.

The woman dressed in armour turned away from the line of stained sinks to face Castiel.

“Anna!” Cas cried out.

**Dramatis Personae:**

_Anael:_ The third prince and brother. A fury, a warrior, allegedly a fallen angel. Protective but brooding.

 

“Hello, Castiel.”

The lights flickered and Anael didn’t smile, just looked at Castiel with an unreadable expression. Her cloak rippled despite there being no wind, a mass of black and darkness.

Anael was Castiel’s most frightening brother, the one most powerful. She looked human and ordinary, until you looked closely at her form. Her eyes had swirling pools of blue-white where her pupils should be, glinting with repressed power. Talons for fingernails. Red hair that seemed simple until under inspection- blazing like fire, burning. Lips burnt black, toxic-looking, poisonous. Castiel had read about the furies in books, killing men for being men, ripping off their genitalia and casting them away. Anael was a little less genocidal.  
She was a spirit, the very _essence_ of an idea. She was a figment of women’s vengeance, a mixture of pain and betrayal and love and heartbreak taken shape.

Balthazar had once whispered to Castiel that he’d heard Anael had been one of the women herself. An angel, ripping her wings off and tumbling down to earth to be with the human who loved her, before he slept with her and cast her aside, losing interest once she no longer had the feathery wings that so entertained him. Balthazar hadn’t said what sort of revenge Anael had taken. He probably didn’t want to.

Anael stood there in her dark clothing, her thick, silver breastplate and pleated skirt. Her great blackness of a cape spilled over her shoulders and pooled on the floor, fluid and dark and sentient. She was a warrior, she was a woman, she was fierce.

But she wasn’t immune to Balthazar’s rules.  
Castiel’s brothers never visited him at school. No matter how much they wanted to come, or he wanted them to go, it wasn’t going to happen. Balthazar had decided it long ago, hissing to the gathered brothers, “how in the bloody name of god is he going to make friends, if we’re there stopping him from reaching out?” Castiel’s life with his brothers remained outside the school halls, and inside, he lived without. Mostly it was awful.

“Anna!” Castiel said, unable to break the smile on his face. “Why are you here?” It was bad to be excited, he knew. If Anael was willing to break one of Balthazar’s rules, it had to be something bad. But Castiel still felt pleased until Anna’s shoulders slumped and she let out a sigh. The cloak twitched upwards before settling down again.

“The boy in the woods,” Anael said. “It’s about him.”

Castiel nodded, hugging his arms around himself. “Do you know what happened?”

“The birds know, and the told the fae, and the fae were- well, rather excited to tell me.” Anael gave a wry smile at this and Castiel scowled.

“Of course they were,” he muttered, folding his arms. The faeries could be awful, always excited at the slightest hint of gossip, and the more miserable it was, the happier they were.

“Don’t be so angry about them, Castiel,” Anael said gently. “They do mean well, you know. They’re such tiny little things, they’ve only able to think of a few things at a time. And I doubt they’d lie about this.”

Cas sighed and settled down on the bathroom floor, crosslegged and cupping his face in his hands. “Go on.”

“There’s a witch in Vivien’s wood,” Anael began. “Not a human one, some sort of wicked creature. The birds say she hasn’t been there long, but she does love music. It’s why they all stopped singing, hiding because they’re afraid of her. The witch kidnapped a boy and locked him up in that birdcage you saw, forcing him to sing. When the boy’s voice broke, the witch left him to die.”  
Anael kneeled down in front of Castiel, folding her hands in her lap. “All the birds loved the boy, listening to him sing happily. When his voice disappeared, they offered to feed him, bringing him fruit and nuts until he was rescued. But the boy turned them down, and said,  
‘once I die, I want my eye to be plucked out and carried to my father, so he may see through it what happened.’  
It wasn’t long until the boy wasted away, and when he did so, the birds carried his eye to her father, who saw what happened. He was king of a small country, and when he found out, he cried and cried. He cried for his child, but he also cried about the witch- the witch, who’d been his first wife, the boy’s mother. And he couldn’t do anything to help.”

Castiel looked at his brother-prince for a time, unsure of what to do with the information. Of course, it was a horrible story, as all untimely deaths are, but Anna must have heard a thousand like it, and a thousand worse. What was so bad about this one?

“It’s too close,” Anael muttered. “He died in _our_ woods. Why? Why here? Why did I miss it?”

Castiel reached out and took Anna’s hand. “You can’t be responsible for every girl in the world, _and_ keep a look out for every boy.” he said gently.

“I’m responsible for _you_ ,” Anael said firmly. “I should have been keeping a closer eye on those woods. I should have known what was happening.”

Cas opened his mouth to speak again before a small tapping at the window interrupted what he was going to say. Anael flicked a hand and the window unlatched, allowing a small ball of golden light to flutter in, sitting on Anna’s shoulder like a parrot.

“Have you told him?” it squeaked happily.

**Dramatis Personae:**

_Gabriel:_ The fifth prince. A snarky faerie who enjoys pranks, sweets, and other people’s misery.

 

“Castiel! Isn’t it funny!” he grinned, his sharp little faerie teeth sparkling. “A murder, right where we live! It’s like a mystery.” The bubble of light dimmed slightly and now Cas could make out most of Gabriel’s features. The tiny little imp stood up and gave them all another bright grin, clutching onto a string of Anael’s hair. “It’s like a scary story,” he said happily, twirling the hair around his arm.

“Gabriel-“ Anael began, before he interrupted again.

“Annie, Annie! The witch is still out there, too.” He glanced over to Castiel slyly, smirking, “We better hide our little princess over here before somebody _gets_ him!”

Castiel pushed his face into his palms, biting his lip. He loved those woods, and the idea that it was hiding a murderer, a kidnapper- it was almost too much.

Anael looked down disapprovingly at Gabriel, who sighed and flitted over to pet Castiel’s cheek. “Don’t worry,” he said in his squeaking voice. “We won’t let anything bad happen.” The show of seriousness was rare, and did nothing to help the overwhelming feeling that something was horribly wrong.

It was almost too much for him to deal with.

“Gabriel,” said Anael gently. “Come here.” The faerie buzzed back over and plonked himself down on Anna’s shoulder. The lights flickered again and Anael’s cloak reached up to wrap itself around them. Just before the two vanished, Anna gave Cas a dark look and said, “Don’t go home through the woods tonight, Castiel.”

**Hannah**

Castiel had called his second most trusted soul. The first time he’d been met with speakerphone, the second time he called he was picked up immediately.

“What is it?” asked Hannah, her voice somewhere between cold and welcoming. She was still upset with him, and rather honest about letting him know.

“Can I get a lift home?” Cas frowned, and then rephrased the question. “I mean, can we hang out? You can pick me up, I’ll go to your house, and then walk home?”

There was a pause over the line before Hannah’s voice came back, sounding a little kinder than before. “Of course, Castiel. I’ll be at your school soon.”

 

**Dean Winchester and the Adventure at Number Thirty Six**

Dean decided to head over to the Wildes’ after school. He dumped his stuff in his room, yelled something incomprehensible about meeting with a friend, rushed past his step-mother before she could question him, and sprinted out of the front door and across the street.

He ran possible exchanges over in his head as he went. _Hey, Elmer Henley. Wanna go torture some kids? At the park? And go get ice cream afterwards?_ Or maybe just, _Hey, number thirty-six. Feel like ice cream?_ He’d decide when he got there. Most of Dean’s best decisions were done spontaneously, anyway.

Dean jumped up to the front door and knocked sharply, grinning to himself and pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. He rocked on the balls of his feet as he waited for an answer, smiling to himself.

The door opened, but Castiel wasn’t standing there. Instead, there was a man dressed in a grubby bathrobe, holding a mug of something that looked like coffee but smelt of whiskey, and staring at Dean like he was a slug.

“Uh, hi,” Dean said.

The man grunted but didn’t respond otherwise.

“Is… Is Castiel here?” Dean chanced, biting his lip. He’d figured out that was probably the boy’s real name, but it was going to be incredibly embarrassing if he was wrong.

“No,” the man in the bathrobe said, and Dean’s heart fell. “He’s out with- with one of his girls.”

“ _One of his girls?_ ” Dean asked, looking horrified. Girls, as in plural? As in multiple girls. As in Castiel, Mr-I-don’t-sleep-around, boy in a skirt, flirting with Dean, Castiel. Castiel was a playboy.

Bathrobe-man shook his head. “Well, they’re friends. I think. Cassie would’ve said something.” He frowned for a moment, before shaking his head again and glaring at Dean. “Who’re you?”

“I’m-“ Dean bit his lip, unsure how to respond. “Number thirty-seven,” he said eventually. “I live across the street. Just moved in, actually, and made friends with your son.” He gave a awkward smile.

Bathrobe-man nodded, still frowning. “Well, he’s not home,” he said almost defensively. “I would know, I’m his father.”

“I- okay.” This was going nowhere. “I guess I should just get going, then,” he said carefully, stepping backwards.

“Yeah,” Bathrobe-man frowned. “I need to get to work.” He promptly slammed the door shut in Dean’s face, who stared at it for a little while in disbelief.

“Ooookay,” he said, before turning around and walking home, tail between his legs.


	6. Bracelets and mean friends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The dead boy from the woods was sitting on Castiel’s windowsill.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Mentions of suicide, death, slight gore, mean friends)

Hannah was waiting outside the school, sitting on the hood of her perfectly-respectable powder blue car. She gave Castiel a ghost of a smile before walking around to get in, letting him throw his bag in the trunk and get in the passenger seat.

**Dramatis Personae:**

_Hannah Havenly:_ The second prince. Current relationship status: Single/It’s complicated.

She was Castiel’s oldest real life friend, slender and determined, each curl of hair falling perfectly on her shoulders. Castiel remembered a time Hannah would have followed him to the ends of the earth, raised an army of goblins in his name. Maybe one day she’d have that much faith in him again. Her expression was mixed when she looked at Castiel- powerful happiness and belief, and bitterness and betrayal.

“Where’s your friend?” she asked, and Castiel could see the flash of green cross her eyes when she mentioned Charlie. Envy.

“Somewhere in the land of the very, very gay,” Castiel said carefully, ignoring his seat belt and sitting his feet up on his seat.

“And will you be joining her?” Asked Hannah, the question more pointed than it should’ve been. Castiel didn’t answer.

They drove for a while in silence, pulling over in the street. They jumped out of the car and bought drinks that were more flavouring than coffee, Castiel picking every taste he could think to choose. Hannah lead him through the streets in the same uncomfortable silence. When she looked away, Castiel jumped into the florists and stole a posy of roses, stuffing them in his schoolbag. They looked over the streets, construction and buildings and bustling, bustling people. Not a tree, or a unicorn, in sight.  
Hannah’s house was in a street with fifteen others exactly the same. No trees here, either.  
When they were sitting in her room, her on her bed and Castiel on her desk, there weren’t trees there. Castiel wished there were, wished they could cleanse the air of the awkwardness between them. The air was hot with embarrassment, and sticky, its falsely sweet breath puffing over his skin.

He hadn’t prepared anything, hadn’t found something to say. Another boy might’ve avoided her, might’ve found some excuse to move away. But sometimes Castiel doubted he was even a boy at all. Why had he come here?  
_Birdcages, carousels, socks swinging between the bars, a prince killed by his mother-_

“Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?” Hannah asked. Her voice was gentle, and Castiel couldn’t help but feel a wave of affection, even in the midst of his discomfort. She still cared. Hannah didn’t understand him, couldn’t understand him, but she cared.

He shook his head and looked down, biting his lip.

“You aren’t going to tell me?”

“Not much is wrong,” Castiel lied. “But Charlie isn’t at school, and Hester was, and so was I. They hate me, you know, one of the nuns actually refused to look at me.”

Hannah’s lips curved into a wry smile. “I’m not surprised,” she said. “What did Raphael say to you once? Ah, the rebellious angel, he called you. The wild child of the woods.”

Castiel’s breath hitched at the mention of the woods, _princes, brothers, kings powerless to stop it, girls who couldn’t fly from their high up Ferris wheels, spinning and spinning until she falls, just like the angel, the rebellious angel, is your heart made of ice, Castiel? What’s wrong with you?_

_What’s wrong with you?_

“There was a dead body in the woods today,” Castiel said, breathing the words out in a rush. He picked up a piece of paper from Hannah’s desk. “Are you going to use this for anything?”

There was a long nothingness.

“Castiel-“ Hannah said. “ _What?_ ”

“There was a dead body in the woods today, and I walked past it when I was going to school. I’m going to origami this paper, okay?” He was already folding it, harsh quick flicks of his fingers shaping the paper.

“Are you serious?” she asked, a hint of disbelief in her voice. Not the good sort of disbelief, either. The I-know-you’re-lying-to-me sort.

“Very serious,” Castiel said, straightening the paper and making a crease along it diagonally.

“Have you told anyone?”

“I’m telling you now.”

“Goddammit, Castiel,” Hannah said angrily. “Are you okay?”

“I am. But he wasn’t. He was sitting in a birdcage, hanging from the big tree-“ Castiel stopped speaking, stopped folding, the words sounding silly in the bright clearness of Hannah’s bedroom. He glanced up at her, and the relief on her face hurt more than the anger had.

“Lord,” she sighed. “I thought I was going to have a heart attack.” The relief passed quickly, and Castiel changed his mind- the anger hurt, too. “Why did you say that? You scared the daylights out of me, don’t say things like that like they actually happened!”

“It did!” Castiel snapped, sitting up and looking at her almost pleadingly. “There are dead people everywhere, there was the girl on the Ferris wheel and now the boy in the bird cage. I can show you, he’s still there in the woods-“

“You saw the suicide?” Hannah asked, frowning and leaning forward.

“It doesn’t matter,” Castiel insisted, hands digging into his origami.

“Castiel, look at me,” Hannah said, her voice stern. She spoke slowly, as if explaining a complicated math problem or talking to a naughty child. “Was there _really_ a dead body in the woods?”

“Yes!” Castiel said. “Yes, and he was a prince, and the birds-“

Hannah stood up, clenching her hands at her sides. “Why do you do this? Why do you keep running off and doing crazy stuff like this?”

She reminded him a little of his father when she did that. He felt his face heat up, his eyes prick with angry tears, toxins burning his eyes. “You never believe me, you didn’t last time-“

Hannah laughed bitterly, tossing her head. “Oh, give me a guess. The fairies told you, didn’t they? The little fat one, who eats all your candy- what was he called?” Her face curved into a smile that looked nothing but cruel. “Gabriel, right? Another little angel for you and your rebel party.”

Castiel bit his lip, clutching the origami to his chest.

“Castiel, there is no Gabriel!”

He glanced over to his schoolbag, the stolen roses sleeping inside.  
A few years ago, Hannah had decided she wanted an explanation for Castiel’s constant pilfering of flowers. He’d told her about his responsibility, finding food for a garden faerie named Gabriel. Gabriel wanted to eat the entirety of Mother’s garden, so to stop him from doing so, Castiel found the prettiest flowers and sweetest sugars he could, taking them home and feeding the fairy.  
He still didn’t understand why Hannah had been so upset about the idea. Maybe it was because her woods had been stolen, the trees disappearing to make way for cars and coffee and clipped lawns.

Castiel looked down to his lap, playing with the paper he had there. He’d finished folding it now, a simple design of a rose sitting in his lap. He wanted to run to his woods and hide in them, bury his face in the grass and let plants sprout from his veins. But he couldn’t, not with the witch there.

Hannah watched him, her face close to a scowl. “Just- Castiel, don’t say things like that. You sound like your mom!”

Castiel stood up and let the rose slip out of his fingers, walking to the doorway and picking up his bag, slinging it over his shoulder and pulling the door open. He let it bang shut behind him as he ran down the stairs, shoes clacking on the too-smooth pavement covering the street. He ran all the way to his own house, and didn’t say a word when he got there.

His bed was his sanctuary, and he flopped down there, hiding himself in the sheets. When the stars came out to cover the sky, he pulled out his phone and did something he should’ve a long time ago.

_Sorry. –CW_

It didn’t make him feel any better.

 

**Hello, heartbeat boy.**

The dead boy from the woods was sitting on Castiel’s windowsill.

Cas had woken up fitfully, squinting through the dim light and padding over, socks sinking into the carpet. He stood a few feet away, and the boy seemed perfectly content to rest on the sill without moving.

“Hello, dead boy,” Castiel said.

“Hello, living boy,” the trespasser replied. “You think so fucking loud, it does my head in. Take a break, will you?”

Castiel didn’t know how to respond to the odd request. Ghosts said strange things, like a writer who hasn’t explained the context of the story. They did their best to clutch onto the world they’d been ripped out of, trying to grip onto the pieces of their life. Some ghosts thought Cas was an old friend. Some ghosts thought he was an old enemy. Some ghosts wrapped themselves around him and held him close, and Castiel called them his brothers.

The dead boy perched on his windowsill and rested his hands between his legs, tilting his head to the side. “You can see me,” he said, smiling wryly. “In fact, you can see a lot of ghosts, can’t you? What a strange little thing you must be.” A striped-sock leg slipped from the ledge and dangled into the abyss of his bedroom. The twisted mess of a mouth smirked. “Cass-tee-el. What a special angel.”

“I just keep an eye out,” Castiel said carefully.

The moonlight glinted on the boy’s wrist, a shining spark of silver. A manacle cuffing him to his dreadful fate. The boy seemed to notice Castiel’s gaze, because he smiled and lifted his wrist invitingly. “Come and look,” he beckoned.

Castiel carefully stepped forward. He peered at the metal, not a manacle but a bracelet. There were little charms hanging from it, showing the moon in full, waxing, waning, new. It melted from each piece of metal to the next.

“It’s beautiful,” Castiel said. And then, “who are y-“

“It is, isn’t it?” the boy interrupted. “My mother gave it to me.”

“That’s… nice,” Castiel said. The boy’s face was mostly hidden by a tangled mess of hair, longer than Castiel’s and far more knotted. He looked thin as a mannequin, a model gone wrong. His voice rasped and cracked and grated, nails on a chalkboard, broken as anything. Gabriel’s story was reliable for once in his life. Who would’ve guessed?  
“Who are you?” Castiel tried again. “I mean, what’s your name? I’m Castiel-“

“I know!” the boy screeched, one stockinged-foot flying out to thud into the wall. “I _know_ that, I told you! Aren’t you supposed to be _smart_?”

“Sorry,” Castiel said quickly, biting his lip. Ghosts could be dangerous if they weren’t addressed properly, particularly ones who’d met such miserable deaths as his.

The boy surveyed him for a moment, like one would a potential meal or scam. “Well, if you really are as clever as they say you are, _Cass-tee-el_ …” He tilted his head back, showing the long, pale line of his neck in the moonlight, the place where his pulse should’ve been throbbing. His hair fell back from his face and the light seemed to shy away from his face, forced back by the gaping, black hole where his eye had once been.

“…you’ll keep your little princes out of the fucking woods.”


	7. Rabbits and Unrequited Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Dean!” shrieked the gangly boy Castiel had seen a few days ago. He was bouncing on a trampoline and using his height to survey the woods surrounding the house. “Dean, I can see them! They’re running into the trees!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Augh, I'm sorry this is so late! School is starting up, which means chapters may take a while to post. Or it will make me organized and I will post everything on time. I don't think I'll be gone for over a week, at the least. And enjoy! This is somewhat of a filler chapter.  
> Warnings for (within the fairytale 'his eyes are dangerous'): Bad head spaces, death, very light gore, possible thought of suicide.

Mother was sleeping. Father was locked up in his office. Castiel was leaning against the dying plum tree, dressed in pastel scarves and baggy pants, flipping through a book of fairytales, in his favourite book of all.

 **Castiel’s favourite book of all:**  
_The Edlund Fables and Fairytales  
_ By Carver Edlund

Castiel remembered, his skin soft and his teeth loose, aged three to four. He smelled of honey and had hair the curled around his face, wearing playsuits and dungarees and oversized jumpers. At bedtime, he’d asked for the normal stories, Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty.

Even then, Mother had been sceptical.

“All those teach you is that if you’re pretty and naïve and sweet, you’ll survive,” she said, looking sterner than Cas had ever seen her. “If you’re beautiful, you make it out. If you’re an ugly sister,” she said, voice dropping even lower as she crept closer to Castiel, smiling widely. “…birds pluck out your eyes!” She scooped him up and covered him in kisses and tickles until he giggled so hard he couldn’t breathe.

Later, when he was starting school and figuring out that there were boys with charming smiles and sad eyes, leather jackets and half-smoked cigarettes, she’d given him some advice. “Never trust the beast, Castiel. Don’t follow the wolf in the hopes he won’t devour you.”

Castiel quickly learned that the only stories his mother really liked were those written by the mysterious author, Carver Edlund. Mother could recite them each by memory, smiling as she did so.

Castiel had received a leather-bound book on his tenth birthday, the treasured Edlund fables. When he read them for the first time, he was surprised to find that they were different to how he remembered, dark and bitter with a pathetic fate spread out for each and every character. The stories weren’t fairytales, they were something more tangible. Something realer.

An inscription on the first read:

_Dear reader,_

_These stories, fables, and memories are somewhat true in one way or another._  
These are stories about you and me.  
They feature:  
-people who kill  
-people who are killed  
-people who are alive  
-and people who are otherwise.

Castiel loved the last line. People who are otherwise, different from simply being dead. People who were never alive in the first place.

He ripped up grass blades as he switched between stories, pulling his bottom lip between his teeth as he tried to decide, eventually ending up with the first fairytale. One that dealt with his favourite topics: death and unrequited love. The wind stirred slightly and brushed over his hair, and he opened his mouth to read aloud to the tree.

 

**His eyes are dangerous**

The bible is broken. The sky is falling. It’s a fairytale, but only in the loosest sense of the word. A fairy tail hanging by a thread of skin, lizard-like and ready to fall.

The prince is tall, dark, and handsome. He moves through princesses like a duck in water, with them for barely a night, if they’re lucky. His eyes are dangerous, the colour of rich forests and snake skins.

You know this story.

The princess comes and goes with the prince, offering him help in his courtrooms and never outside of it. One day she stays to dance, and the prince gives her one of those hopeless smiles. Her eyes are deep, the colour of clear oceans and the night sky.

Slowly the prince slips and falls into a darkness, burning hot and painful. He spills blood and his blood is spilled, and it hurts and it hurts and it hurts.

Fairy godmother, green skin and dark eyes. She offers a dress to the princess, a pair of glassy slippers, and a mouthful of fairy dust. Just enough to fly, but not enough to carry someone.

The princess tries anyway.

She drags him out and up and tries to get back to their companionable work pace, both of them trying to pretend that they can stay away, that they aren’t driving each other fucking insane. She looks at him and he looks at her, and the stepfather clears his throat until they get back to work.

The prince pushes her away, the closer she gets, the further away he moves. Her glass slippers start to split and shatter from all her pacing, her panicking, her pretty eyes getting redder and redder.

The prince leaves and returns, shoves her away and pulls her back until she’s caught in a loop. He loses himself and finds his way back to her again, keeping her at arms length until she wants to scream.

She moves closer, and so does he. He moves backwards, and she moves forward again. He rushes away, and she rushes after him. He shoves her aside, and she walks away. She moves closer, and so does he.

The glass slippers crack open and she cuts her feet on the glass. The prince lifts her up and wraps her in a shawl, taking her home. For a while, everything is okay.

The prince moves away and the princess’s shawl turns to a shroud. She finds someone cruel enough to make use of her, and she turns her throat to the blade.

The prince calls for her, and the princess never calls back.

 

**Dean Winchester and the Infestation**

Castiel finished his story and idly flicked through the book, searching for another to read, before a shout echoed through the yard. Castiel sat up and shut his book, listening intently to the yells. Shouts, yells, screams, his mind immediately flying away to the woods, to the window the dead boy had been sitting at.

_Keep your little princes out of the fucking woods._

Castiel sprinted over to number thirty-seven, book clutched to his chest like the shield of a knight, running to face his dragon. He crept around the side of the house, squeezing into the garden.

Another screech echoed out, and Castiel frowned. Laughter. Young, too, clearly the youngest Winchester/Corlls. He sighed in relief and turned to leave.

“Who the fuck are you?”

Castiel turned back and raised an eyebrow at the owner of the voice. A blonde boy stood in the centre of the path, arms folded and gaze fixed in a scowl. He seemed to be in his early pre-teens, but looked grumpy enough to be middle aged.

“I’m Cas,” Castiel smiled, looking as happy as he could. He did like children, but he wasn’t the best with them. Especially not at this age. “Is everything okay? I heard people shouting, and I worried.”

The boy rolled his eyes and sighed. “Everyone’s always freaking out,” said the little Corll. “Who invited you here, anyway?”

“I did, bitch.”

Castiel lifted his gaze from the boy to look at Dean, and couldn’t help the way his face almost immediately split into a smile. Dean’s glasses were off today, and his hair was messy like he’d been running his fingers through it. There was a smear of dirt covering his cheek.

“C’mon, Elmer Henley,” Dean said happily, and it sounded genuine. Like he was pleased to see Castiel.

“He said his name was Cas,” the boy grumbled, rolling his eyes again as Castiel stepped around him to go meet Dean. Cas took a moment to admire the backyard, covered in children’s toys and basically-built Ikea picnic tables. There were garden tools surrounding a tree in the middle of the yard, a huge hole dug out around it.

The boy shoved his way past Castiel, face still crumpled in a glare. “Move it,” he spat.

“Oi!” Dean yelled, reaching out and punching his side as he walked past. “Brat,” he said, turning back to Castiel and giving him that magically delightful smile again. “Come to complain about the noise, number thirty-six?”

Castiel crossed his arms as well as he could without squashing his book. “I thought someone was slaughtering you.”

“Aw, and you ran over to rescue us? How brave of you, my dear knight,” Dean said, mouth twisting into a smirk. “And you were going to bash the killer in with that brick of yours?” He leaned down, wiping the dirt on his hands over his jeans, and peered at the gold lettering. “The Eddluned-“

“How did you manage to mispronounce it that badly?” Castiel smiled, shaking his head. “The Edlund fables and fairytales.”

“Ah, right.”

“You know them?”

“I have no idea what that is.”

Castiel’s eyes widened. “Really? You don’t know Carver Edlund? Not any of his stories?” Castiel started to spout off titles to Dean’s increasingly surprised face. “ _Leader of the Angels? The Seventh Princess? Blood Pacts? The Men of Letters?”_

“Dude, you’ve lost me.”

“Dean!” shrieked the gangly boy Castiel had seen a few days ago. He was bouncing on a trampoline and using his height to survey the woods surrounding the house. “Dean, I can see them! They’re running into the trees!”

“What happened?” asked Castiel.

Dean snorted. “Come have a look,” he said, guiding Cas over to the hole in the tree. Castiel half-expected to find buried treasure or a fallen star, but all he saw was a group of fallen tunnels, slowly crumbling apart. Dean gave Castiel a grin that left him light headed before saying, “We were gonna plant an apple tree for Kate –she’s my step mom-, so she can make us pie, and then we mined into a rabbit city or something. They all came swarming out like plague rats or some shit and Sam’s been screaming like a girl ever since. That’s him over there,” he said, pointing to the boy attempting flips on the trampoline. “He’s fourteen. There’s also Jo, you probably know her. Blonde and vicious, she’s fifteen. The one you met was Adam, and yes, he does hate everyone. Kate says he’s going through a phase.” Dean laughed and rolled his eyes. “More like he’s phasing from Anakin to Darth Vader.”

Castiel hadn’t been able to look at Dean this closely in broad daylight. He had a twitchy sort of air about him, his hands moving about like they needed to be doing something. He was still grinning, but there was a sort of sadness about him, a loss. Castiel’s mind matched him to a groom left at the altar, a girl wafting lace and running down the aisle, away from him and out of the church. She left Dean in his too-stiff suit, a smile still plastered on his face and a hole in his chest.  
His face was freckled, tanned, scarred. Odd looking burn marks licking up his collar bone. Battle worthy. He looked like a soldier, and his grin seemed so odd on his weathered face. Castiel wasn’t sure what it was that made him look so happy, so easy in his cheerful form.

“This is the boy from house number thirty-six, Sam,” Dean said loudly. “He’s our neighbour, the one with the Christmas tree? He says his name’s Elmer Henley.”

“My name’s Castiel,” Cas smiled, calling over to the boy on the trampoline.

“Dean was drawing you,” the boy called back, his shaggy hair falling over his smirk. “In his journal, I saw it.” He stopped jumping on the trampoline and sat down on the mat, grinning widely. “I think he likes you!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for the people commenting, they are the entirety of what motivates me! <3 Please continue, my lovelies. And yes, Sam is right. Dean does like Cas, very, very much.


	8. Toadstools and older brothers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “That doesn’t sound good, Cas,” he said slowly, as if he was still figuring out what to say. “You heard what Gabriel said. You know what deaths like that do to people. They hurt them. Break them. Turn them inside out.”

Castiel dragged his feet along the grubby concrete, the overgrown path through the wood. His eyes fixed on the cracks on the road, avoiding them as much as he could. _Step on a crack, break your mother’s back. Step on a crack, your dad’ll get the sack.  
_ “Where were you all weekend?” he demanded eventually.

“Why?” Balthazar smiled, ruffling his hair. “Did you miss me, _petit frère_?”

“No,” Castiel huffed, trying to fix his hair again. “I had a visitor.”

Balthazar smiled and leaned down to kiss his cheek. Castiel rolled his eyes and ducked out of his reach.

Castiel and Balthazar both had permanent circles under their eyes. Castiel’s from make up and a lack of sleep, Balthazar’s from a lack of good health in his brief lifetime. They had the same matchstick legs, unstable and looking like they might snap off at any second. Castiel’s were from a lack of interest in food and Balthazar’s were from too much interest in drugs. Balthazar wore fabulous clothes, the height of LOUIS II fashion. He tried to keep changing his appearance daily- trying to change, trying to keep moving, trying to remind himself that death wasn’t necessarily the end.

Carefully, he slipped his arms through Castiel’s and took his schoolbag, carrying it dutifully. Sometimes Castiel thought that if he’d get married, he’d want a veil, Balthazar carrying the end of his train, or better yet, walking by his side, giving him away to his spouse- to Dean, maybe.

“Are you still too grumpy to hold a proper conversation or are you going to tell me who I’ve been replaced with?”

Castiel rolled his eyes, allowing Balthazar a small smile. “I’m not going to let someone single white female you, don’t worry,” he said gently, nudging his side. “Besides, I doubt the boy could do a good job of it, anyway. Far too skinny.”

“Who was he?” Balthazar frowned slightly.

Castiel bit his bottom lip, trying to pass it off casually. “The boy we saw last week. The one in the cage.”

Balthazar stepped closer, like a bodyguard with a confirmed assassination attempt. “What did he say?”

“He said he found my thinking too loud for his tastes and that I should keep out of the woods.” Castiel tossed his head back, forehead creasing into a scowl. “Unfortunately for him, I’ll do what I like. I’m allowed to think, and I’m allowed to walk in the woods.”

Balthazar frowned even more, wrapping an arm around Castiel and ignoring the shove to his chest it earned him. “That doesn’t sound good, Cas,” he said slowly, as if he was still figuring out what to say. “You heard what Gabriel said. You know what deaths like that do to people. They hurt them.  Break them. Turn them inside out.”

Castiel didn’t need to try hard to remember the swinging pendulum of the leg. He fought back a shudder and lifted his chin. “And remind me of the last time Gabriel told the real story of- anything?””

“He is a tricksy little thing, but you know he means well,” Balthazar said chastisingly. “Cassie, you should pay more attention to the faeries. There is usually some truth behind their words.”

Castiel didn’t want to believe the story. He didn’t want to think that anyone’s mother could do something so horrible. But he’d seen it- the cage, the body, the empty eye, the broken rasping of the boy’s voice. “I don’t want to think about it,” he said firmly.

“Of course, _mon petit frere_ ,” Balthazar said, far more gently than usual. “Let me tell you about a girl I met at one of the parties in London. Before the plague hit, of course. She was a mistress, and you know how mistresses are, feisty little thing with flaming hair and bright eyes….”

 

**The return of the queen**

Back at school, Charlie had returned a week late with a proud expression. Her chin and her arm were held high, cradling the plastered limb in her hands like a trophy.

“An entire week? Just for this?” Castiel asked, shaking his head.

“Hey, it was hard work!” Charlie insisted. “I spent most of my time learning how to write with my left hand.”

“And by that you mean finding a way to use your left hand to the height of its scissoring ability,” Castiel teased.

“Naturally,” Charlie laughed, leaning over to kiss his cheek.

She spent the entire day using her left hand, writing essays and solving equations with it. She did a terrible job of hiding her ecstasy at handing nonsense over at the end of class, papers covered in shaky scribbles and occasionally the odd thing that looked like it could pass for a dick. After she complained of an arm cramp, an exhausted nun told her that she could just listen or copy Castiel’s notes later, but Charlie simply took this as an invitation to start an essay with her pen between her toes.

Castiel spent all of the religious education classes scrawling over Charlie’s cast, angels and gods from varying religions, fairies and birdcages and a lonely eye resting by her wrist.

“It was completely embarrassing,” Charlie kept saying. “But it was still funny, you know, I was yelling about how Spike could go fuck himself and waving my arms around, and then suddenly I’m falling backwards and my arm hurts like hell. And then Joanna Harvelle was right there and she asked if I was okay, so of course I just had to pretend I meant to do it and I told her I would be okay if I got a healing kiss from her.”

“That’s terrible,” Castiel grinned, looking up from his artwork. “Did it work?”

“She winked and told me to wait for the second date.”

Charlie was the only good thing about this awful excuse for a school. Castiel hadn’t been raised at all religiously, Mother being far more interested in modern day fairytales than in dusty old tomes with outdated opinions on things Becky Wilde liked, like forbidden lovers and homosexuality. The only reason Castiel was even in St Dominic’s was because Father had heard about an infestation of STDs at the local high school and decided it was time to remove his gender-ambiguous, delicate, gay son from there. Because who would get a disease in an anti-gay, abstinence-only school?

And Mother had gone to St Dom’s, and wasn’t she just a perfect role model?

Castiel could still remember the first time he was dropped off there, gates clanging shut behind him like the front of a coffin. This was also the only time Balthazar had lowered his stance and allowed Castiel’s brothers to visit. He stood at the gate and kissed Castiel’s hand gently before patting him on the back and giving him a wink, ushering him on.  Neither Bobby nor Anna were able to make it, but Gabriel’s little gold light buzzed around Castiel’s head excitedly.

“If anyone’s mean, glue them onto their desk!” he shouted repeatedly in his tiny voice. Pranks were one of Gabriel’s favourite things, the solution to all problems in his mind.

“Good luck, little unicorn,” Meg had purred, her rather voluptuous top half draped elegantly over the front of the fountain, tail flicked up in the air behind her.

**Dramatis Personae:**

_Meg:_ The fourth prince. Mermaid/Siren, rather beautiful, possibly mass-murderer. When he was younger, Castiel had thought he had a crush on her, but soon realized the feelings were simply admiration with a hint of envy. Suffered at the hands of her lover.

 

She tugged him over to give him a kiss on his cheek and ruffle his hair, smiling up at him with sharp teeth. “If you meet any nice boys, make sure to let me get a look at them before you do anything crazy.” She tossed her hair back and gave him another grin. “I’ve learned from my mistakes.”

Castiel never called her his sister. Sisters were wicked, were the nuns in the school or the ugly step-siblings who constantly resented you. Meg and Anna were his brothers, his princes, his protectors. Knights who wrapped their cloak of night around his shoulders and kept him safe, wizards who tried to hide their emotion and cover the tears in their eye with fountain water.

 

**Not-dates and tea parties with the devil**

“So, these are the big bad woods?” Dean asked, hands stuck in his pockets as he stomped along the path.

“Mmhm,” Castiel replied, reaching out for his hand and tugging it out of the pocket. He locked their fingers together and dragged Dean further into the forest. Dean tried to pretend his entire body didn’t warm up at the simple touch.

He shook his head to get rid of the thoughts and grinned over at Castiel. “Don’t seem so bad,” he said casually, hoping Cas would be impressed.

“That’s because they’re not,” was the blunt reply, before the grip tightened and they slowed to a halt. “Here, devil’s tea party,” Castiel said, smiling over at him.

Cas had an interesting smile. It managed to light up his face, but with a cold sort of light, like a photo with all the red tones removed. It wasn’t fake, exactly, and it wasn’t sad either, but it wasn’t happy the same way pink isn’t red. Technically it might be a shade of the other colour, but they’re still so different they deserve different categories.

“I’m only seeing trees,” Dean admitted, looking around and frowning slightly.

Castiel sighed, and his entire face fell like Dean had disappointed him in some way. Dean immediately wanted to take it back, wanted to search out for the ‘devil’s tea party’ until he found it, wanted to prove to Castiel that- that he understood.

But Dean didn’t understand, not really. Castiel Wilde was an iceberg he could only see the tip of. And Dean was the titanic, heading straight towards him and powerless to stop it.

Of course, Dean didn’t want to stop. He wanted to hit that iceberg as hard as he could. (In more ways than one.)

“The toadstools,” Castiel explained gently, taking Dean’s hand again and guiding him to a small circle of very poisonous looking toadstools.

“Oh, I get it.” He smiled to himself. “The toadstools are like the little tables, and they’re all grouped together in a sort of party. And the devil’s because they’re deadly, right? Wait, no-“ He carefully counted them up, concentrating. “Because there are nine of them and there’s nine circles of hell?”

Castiel’s entire face lit up in that smile again, this time much stronger than before. Dean got caught in his eyes, pretty, deep eyes that he could fall into. He’d always been a sucker for blue eyes.

“Yes,” Castiel breathed, voice soft as the fading mist around them. “You understood?”

Dean looked over Castiel’s face, eyes dragging from his forehead to his eyes to his cheeks to his nose to his _lips_ , stopping there for a moment before flicking back up again. “Yeah,” he said gently. Only a little, and not everything, but- something. He figured something out about Cas. “Yeah, I understood.”

Castiel stared at him for a long time, like he was some sort of memento that Cas couldn’t quite remember why he had. “I thought you would,” he said after a long pause.

Dean grinned a little and took Castiel’s hand in his own. “C’mon, let’s get outta here before one of us accidentally sells our soul.” They started to traipse back through the woodland, more comfortable together than before.

Castiel snorted. “Don’t worry, Dean,” he said teasingly. “If you sold your soul I’d come and rescue you from hell.”

“Well, you are named after an angel,” Dean smiled. “So I guess you’d have special powers against demons or something.” His smile slipped a little when Castiel stopped walking, standing there blankly. “What?”

“How did you know?” Castiel asked, eyes wide. “How did you know about the first Castiel?”

“I, uh-“ Dean shrugged awkwardly. The real answer was that, ever-suspicious after the first lie, he’d remembered the name from somewhere and googled it, remembering that Castiel was an angel. His mom had always been into that kind of fairy bullshit. “Google?”

Castiel seemed to relax and he smiled again. “You have been googling me, Dean Winchester?”

“How was I supposed to know that was your real name?” he protested a little weakly.

Castiel just laughed and shook his head. “Come on, let’s get back before it’s dark.”

They walked in companionable silence for a little while before Dean spoke up. “You might think the angel dude was the first Castiel, but you’re the first one in my books.” It was an awkward attempt at flirtation, but he hoped Cas would appreciate it.

“I’m really not,” was all Cas said, voice quiet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whoa okay it's been a while. Unfortunately for me, I'm struggling with wanting to be alive. Fortunately for the story, this means we're getting some nice dark chapters coming up. I'll try to be less of a piece of shit when it comes to updating.


	9. Mermaids and mommy issues

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean just laughed and rolled his eyes, but it made Castiel's stomach bubble. He was so bright and warm and welcoming, Dean was. His glasses were slipping forward on his nose, dirt smudged over his cheek. Up close like this Castiel could see little crooked gaps in his teeth, a bend in his nose like it had been broken and never set quite right. Dean had full, round lips, making his face look a little more feminine. Castiel liked it, liked that Dean wasn't a rough man firmly on the masculine side of his gender. Dean couldn't be forced into the gender binary.

Castiel was ice. He was cold, burning, spiralling despair.  
He leeched the warmth from other people's bodies in a slow, dull ache, numbing them and cooling them until they couldn't think to breathe  
Castiel was ice, and ice shatters so easily.

 "You look awful," Balthazar said, tone concerned, touch gentle. He brushed a hand over Castiel's forehead and frowned. "It's that Winchester boy, isn't it?"

 "It's the first Castiel," was all the ghost got in reply.

 Balthazar bit his lip and sighed. "Petit frere-"

 "No."

 "I'm the wrong one. I should have-" He cut off the sentence, letting it hang in the air like bait.

 Balthazar pulled Castiel close, stroking his cheek again. " _Darling._  You're not the second anything. You're your own person. You are not Oscar Wilde, or Oscar Wilde's sister, or a lonely angel. You are your own person, and you are good."

 Castiel was quiet for a moment before he smiled, kissing Balthazar's cheek. "Love you, Zar."

 "And I you, my little songbird."

 

  **Gardening dates**

 Castiel invited himself over to Dean's house, wearing a dress that looked like it was made of paper mache and carrying his book and a bag of fertilizer. "Mama wanted me to give you this," he called out to the Winchester- Corls, kneeling around a scraggly tree and throwing worms to each other.

 "You call your mom 'mama'? Seriously?" Dean stood up and grinned. He was a little tanner from the sun, his freckles standing out on his face like stars. Everything came from stardust. It was Gabriel's favourite tale to tell, to which Anna would snort and say that everything was made of earth. Castiel loved freckles and moles and little patches of flaky, uneven skin. Reminders of the stars etched onto people's bodies. Dean must have been a bright star before his atoms rearranged to make up a human.

 "You call yours 'Kate'," Castiel pointed out, carefully setting down his book of fairytales and kneeling next to Dean,brushing off his skirt.

 Dean's smile seemed a little fixed for a moment, but he recovered quickly. "That's 'cause she's my stepmom, dummy."

 "Ah." Castiel nodded, reaching out to reassure him before hesitating. He never was good with touch. Dean seemed to notice the floundering and squeezed Castiel's knee, leaving a grubby  brown mark on the white dress.

 "Oh- fuck, dude, I am so sorry," Dean said quickly. "Uh-"

Castiel waved a hand carelessly. "It'll wash. I came over to garden, anyway. _Mom_  wanted to make sure you had enough fertilizer. She used to love to garden before..." Castiel trailed off, before smiling. It wasn't as good as Dean's, and he was sure it came off more scary than sweet. "Anyway, I do most of it now. I like it, too."

 Dean nodded, chuckling a little. "Look at the pair of us and our mommy issues. Probably why I have a thing for older women," he winked.

 "I think that's just because you can't find porn of sixteen year olds," Castiel said wryly.

 Dean just laughed and rolled his eyes, but it made Castiel's stomach bubble. He was so bright and warm and welcoming, Dean was. His glasses were slipping forward on his nose, dirt smudged over his cheek. Up close like this Castiel could see little crooked gaps in his teeth, a bend in his nose like it had been broken and never set quite right. Dean had full, round lips, making his face look a little more feminine. Castiel liked it, liked that Dean wasn't a rough man firmly on the masculine side of his gender. Dean couldn't be forced into the gender binary.

 "Are you going to keep counting my freckles, or are you going to garden?" Dean asked, and Castiel's face heated up. But there was a lopsided smile on Dean's face, and his eyes were soft like Castiel had given him some great hope.

 "How shall I help?" Castiel replied, and his own eyes mirrored Dean's.

 

  **Relationship advice from a serial killer:**

 "You like him," Meg cooed.

 She was stretched out in Castiel's bathtub, her back arched over the edge of the tub and her tail folded up along the other side. Her breasts fell down with the pull of gravity, round and smooth with little stretch marks along them. 'Waves', she called them, little waves rippling across the swell of her chest. When he was younger, Castiel had thought he'd grow breasts like hers when he grew up. Even now, when he'd learned about his painfully dull body, he sometimes wondered what it would be like. Sometimes wished he knew. There was a heart-shaped shell settled over Meg's left eye, held on by will power or magic, or maybe just the wildness of her hair. Her hair, always irritatingly beautiful when it was wet, curled around her shoulders and spread out, blonde-brown and almost sentient. It rippled and glinted gold, one strand reaching out, tentacle-like, to pull a bottle of shampoo from the windowsill and flick at the lid of it.

 "Maybe," Castiel said, shrugging out of his dressing gown and climbing into the bath, knees pulled to his chest and body squished to the side to make room for Meg. He'd never had much of a problem with being naked, especially not in front of his brothers. Father had yelled at him many a time for running through the garden completely starkers.

 "You  _do_ ," she replied excitedly, reaching out to take his hands in hers. "Come a few months from now and I'll be teaching you how to pleasure a man," she winked.

 Castiel sighed. "Meg," he pointed out, "you don't have any genitalia."

 "Doesn't matter, little one. Mermaids are sensual creatures, and you, my darling, are a virgin."

 "Why is everyone attacking me about my virginity?" Castiel sighed. "I don't want to have sex with strangers, and I don't want to drag Dean into... into all this." He waved a hand to gesture to Meg.

 "So you want to have sex with him."

 " _Meg_."

 She laughed, flicking Castiel's side with her tail, hair twisting and spilling around like it was laughing itself. "He's cute, nerdy, and clearly into all your little quirks. Go for it, Clarence."

 "You are the worst," Castiel grumbled. "I'd rather get relationship advice from Anna."

 Meg pulled a face. "I love her, I do. She helped me out myself once, a while ago. But for heaven's sake, Castiel, don't castrate the poor boy."

 "Fair enough," Castiel admitted. Anael was skeptical of men at best. Castiel got a pass for his gender confusion. "I just- I don't want it to end in tears, but I know it would."

 "Better to have loved and lost then to have never loved at all," Meg quoted, making Castiel roll his eyes.

 

 "Whatever you say, bloodpearl mermaid."


	10. Wonderland and support groups

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Castiel sighed and buried his face in Anna's chest, letting the darkness of her cloak wrap him up and shelter him from the sound. That awful, awful cacophony of screaming, like dying cats, only worse. The boy was out prancing over the garden lawn, wailing up at the moon like someone had ripped out his gut and he wanted the entire world to be in just as much pain as he was.  
> "I think..." Meg began, almost hesitantly. "I think he's singing."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings for slight gore, low self esteem, death encouragement.

Meg might think that dating Dean would be the best thing that ever happened to him, but Castiel was somewhat inclined to take everything she said with a pinch of salt. Taking love advice from someone who'd murdered their lover was not high on Castiel's list of brilliant ideas. Besides, Dean was funny and smart and kind and handsome, and he had hands that were so warm they practically burned when he touched Cas. And he did things like rescue kittens from the road even though he was allergic, and let his cousin put make up on him even though she was awful at it, and baked cookies and invited Castiel over to eat them. Dean wore slightly-too-big nerd glasses, big black frames that fell over his face, and ripped jeans and dungeons and dragons shirts, and he'd pair it with a leather jacket of an obnoxiously bright coloured hoodie. Dean Winchester was the living embodiment of sunshine, and no matter how much Castiel wanted him he couldn't hurt Dean like that. Castiel was a mess.

 

**Not-so pleasant conversation**

"What are you doing?"

The boy with the missing eye was back again. The dead boy, the thin one, the one wearing a dirty, faded, muddy dress.

"Reading," Castiel said, voice a little to snide to be safe. "Let me guess, I'm reading too loudly."

" _Yes,_ " he moaned, flopping down backwards. He hung from the window sill like some twisted trapeze artist, hair brushing over the ground as he flopped down. It would have been almost endearing if his shirt hadn't ridden up to show his emaciated ribs, grubby and smudged and far too pale.

"I don't know how to stop thinking loudly," Castiel said, biting his lip and putting his book away. "I can't help it."

The boy sat up, tilting his head to the side. A small stream of blood trickled out of his missing eye and down his face. "You could die," he suggested. "You could walk out into those spooky old woods and wither away. Just like I did."

Castiel shuddered and pulled up his blankets. "I think I'll pass, thanks." He rubbed his hands over his cold, cold arms, thinking of Dean's smile and people who weren't dead and creepy and hated him.

"We're kind of similar, you know," the boy said, smiling slyly. "We both wear dresses. We both see dead people. We were both killed by our crazy, crazy mothers."

"Shut up," Castiel said, sitting up, face white. "Shut the hell up, you don't know anything. "Don't talk about Becky like that."

The boy shrugged lazily, leaning back. For a moment Castiel hoped he'd smash through the glass and fall, but it wouldn't work. You can't kill a boy who's already dead. "She's crazy, Castiel, everyone knows it," he cooed. "And if you don't kill her first, she'll make you crazy too."

Castiel's fingers curled into fists. "I'm not crazy. Mama isn't crazy. Crazy isn't even a medical condition, it's just a slur, and you shouldn't use it against mentally ill people."

The boy laughed in a way that would have been musical if his throat wasn't cracked and ripped and dead. "You're in Wonderland, Cassie. We're all mad here." He leaned forward, his one eye wide and earnest. "I loved my mommy, too, just like you do. I loved her _so_  much, that I never thought she'd do this to me. Then she locked me up and I didn't want to believe that she was killing me."

"Mother can't help it," Castiel said quietly, the slight tremor in his voice giving him away. "She's not killing me. She's not crazy. She's trying."

That eye was really awful. In books, people said missing eyes were gaping holes, but it wasn't, not really. It was a mess, a dent in a mound of skin, red and smooth and fleshy and infected with black and red and pus, mounds of skin bubbling up with blood. It made Castiel want to vomit.

"I'll tell you what, Cas-ti-el," the boy hummed, "If your mother doesn't kill you first..." he paused, taking in the dramatic affect, lips quirking into a grin. "Then I will." He winked with his one working eye, and unlatched the window, slipping out and running over the garden into the woods. Castiel watched until he couldn't see the boy, then went over and locked his window.

He didn't sleep that night.

 

**One-man band**

Castiel's brothers were huddled up in his room. Anael sat next to him, rubbing his back, Gabriel fiddling with his hair. Meg was hunched into a bucket on his desk and looking miserable as she tipped the water over her tail. Balthazar was pacing back and forth behind the windowsill.

"What is he doing?" the ghost exclaimed, throwing up his hands.

Castiel sighed and buried his face in Anna's chest, letting the darkness of her cloak wrap him up and shelter him from the sound. That awful, awful cacophony of screaming, like dying cats, only worse. The boy was out prancing over the garden lawn, wailing up at the moon like someone had ripped out his gut and he wanted the entire world to be in just as much pain as he was.

"I think..." Meg began, almost hesitantly. "I think he's singing."

Castiel made a pained sound and burrowed closer, trying to imagine he was back in the warmth of his mothers womb. It didn't work.

Anael stroked a hand through his hair and kissed the top of his head. "Why, though? You'd think he'd want to stop singing after what his mother did to him."

"And you'd think he'd seek help from Cassie instead of killing him, but here we are," Balthazar snapped. He'd always butted heads with Anael.

Gabriel tugged at Castiel's hair, chirping up excitedly. "I think he's trying to scare Cas! He wants Cas to be all scared like in a movie!"

"Hush," Anael said firmly, and Gabriel quietened. "Meg? Do you have any ideas?"

Meg bit her lip and sighed, looking down. "I wish I did," she admitted quietly. "You know mermaids are natural singers-" for once she broke off her proud speech, and simply shrugged. "But this sounds awful. I think she just wants to annoy us, honestly. It's like the Ebola of sound."

"What's Ebola?" Gabriel asked excitedly, burrowing himself into Castiel's hair.

Castiel carefully plucked him out. "A disease," he replied. "It makes you bleed out of your mouth, and your eyes, and your ears, and your ass, and-"

"Don't wind him up," Balthazar groaned. He sat down on a chair and rubbed his temples. "I think I've got a way to help," he said after a while, biting his lip. "But I can't promise anything."

Castiel slowly disentangled himself from Anna's arms and walked over to kiss Balthazar's forehead. "Thank you," he whispered. "Thank you, all of you. I-" his voice hitched. "I love you. A lot."

"Oh, sweetie," Meg sighed, holding her arms out. "Come here. We love you too." Castiel hugged her tight, smiling a little into her shoulder, and she tapped his nose. "Now, if you think I'm going to let some evil little bitch steal away my favourite human after he finds his Romeo, you're dead wrong, Clarence."

Anael laughed and walked over, kissing Castiel's forehead. "Come, Meg, I'll take you back to the sea. Balthazar, you will keep an eye on him, right?"

"Course," Balthazar nodded, standing up and wrapping an arm around Castiel. "And Gabriel can stay, too. We need a brave little fire cracker like him on our side."

Gabriel's face lit up and he zoomed over to kiss Castiel's nose with his tiny mouth. "I'll protect you," he said fiercely. Castiel smiled.

"I know," he said,  stroking Gabriel's wings. "I know you will."


End file.
